


they would be as in love with you as i am

by cosetties



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Break Up, Communication Failure, Fluff, Future Fic, Jealousy, M/M, This is so sappy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-17
Updated: 2014-03-17
Packaged: 2018-01-16 00:22:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1324774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosetties/pseuds/cosetties
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ian always did know how to hurt Mickey best.</p>
            </blockquote>





	they would be as in love with you as i am

**Author's Note:**

> i'm so scared of what's going to happen in 4x09 so here's some fluff. i really shouldn't have watched shameless in four days because now all i can think about is this stupid ship and these stupid boys someone save me.
> 
> i can't believe that i've fallen so far that i'm using song lyrics as my titles.

It goes like every other love story: with his nuisance of a sister barging into his room on Christmas Eve to tell him that Ian fucking Gallagher is currently dating some douchebag who wears designer jeans and has more money than the Gallaghers have had their entire lives.

Merry Christmas, Mickey Milkovich. It’s gonna be a good one.

“I don’t give a shit,” Mickey says, and he knows it sounds childish. He may as well have plugged his ears and hummed to block out the noise, because Mandy just chuckles in return. She gets it. She’d loved Ian Gallagher once too.

Thing is, Mickey doubts she’s had Ian’s cock up her ass. He has dibs on heartbroken ex privileges.

“Aren’t you the slightest bit curious?” she sings.

“Nope,” he says. If he jams his sock on too angrily, Mandy doesn't have to know.

“Ryan’s visiting the Gallaghers with Ian now.”

That gets Mickey’s attention, at least. Ian wouldn’t take just anyone back home to meet his family and risk scarring him for life. He must be special, then.

Mickey’s fingers are slow, deliberate where they lace up his boots. “What have you been doing over there, anyway?”

“Lip,” Mandy says without missing a beat. “You should come over, catch up with Ian. He’s only going to be here for a couple of days. Come on, it’s Christmas Eve. And Carl likes you.”

Carl likes anyone who lives on the wrong side of legal. He’d probably even get along with Terry if they were to meet, so it’s not a exactly a high recommendation.

Throwing himself back on the bed, Mickey shoves his pillow over his head and counts to ten before gritting out, “Fuck off.”

“You’ve been in a slump since you two broke up. You’re even back _home_ , and I know you hate this hellhole.”

“’m not going,” Mickey says.

“You fucked up—“

“—why do you assume—“

Mandy glares daggers at him, and alright, maybe it was his fault that Ian had left that night, walked right out of the fragile life they’d built without a backwards glance. “ _You fucked up_ , and here’s your chance to fix it.”

“You said it yourself, Gallagher has a boyfriend now.”

Mandy looks unimpressed. “Pretty sure the love of his goddamn life trumps the fling he’s having to forget about him.”

Mickey wants to believe her, but maybe this is good for Ian. He’s a flowers and commitment kind of guy, and Mickey had never been able to give that to him. The only time he’d tried his hand at the art of romance, he’d nearly burned their place down.

Mandy rolls her eyes again and tugs at his wrist.

He follows.

* * *

The moment Ian had graduated from high school—with a passable if not great GPA—he’d hightailed it out of the Southside. With his army dreams shot and West Point no longer a viable option, Ian only saw it fitting to move in with Lip, picking up odd jobs whenever he could.

(Mickey and Ian used to talk about it, when things got bad. Just leaving and never looking back. It’d be expensive, they knew, but after growing up in a neighborhood where everyone knew everyone, where their judgmental eyes pinpointed him as “Mickey Milkovich, don’t go near him, he’s bad news,” the anonymity would be welcome.)

It had only taken two months and more than a few unsubtle hints, courtesy of his sister, for Mickey to come chasing after him. There was nothing for him back home, not with his stomach churning every time his eyes chanced on Svetlana’s baby, not with his father in prison yet again. His brothers were too dumb to need him, and Mandy could take care of herself. She always had.

So, with little more than the clothes on his back and no future plans stored up, Mickey had chased after Ian like the pathetic sucker he was.

“Missed you,” was all Mickey had been able to choke out when he’d finally found Ian dancing at a gay club with yet another middle-aged man. At least he’d been wearing clothes that time.

Ian broke into a small smile then, barely there. Mickey was lucky he’d had a while to decipher Ian, brand the kid’s habits into his brain. “Missed you too, asshole.”

He breathed in Ian’s scent, and somewhere in the back of his mind, he thought this could last, just maybe.

It didn’t.

* * *

Ryan is everything Mickey suspected he would be. Smart, athletic, has a stable, well-paying job. He’s in the middle of a pack of Gallaghers when Mickey drops by, and the moment he sees the guy, Mickey decides his face deserves a good beating, no questions asked. He even has his hair slicked back, for God’s sake. He’s practically a walking, talking punching bag.

What Ian sees in Ryan, Mickey can guess. He’s everything Mickey never was. Mickey wouldn’t be able to get his life together if God himself gave him divine durable-strength tape and superglue. Ryan is the kind of guy who has his life planned out start to finish, and Mickey wouldn’t be surprised if he’d already picked out the coffin he’d be buried in.  

Fiona spares Mickey a troubled glance as she spots him sitting on the couch, beer already in hand. She’s never liked him much, but Ian had always assured Mickey she had warmed up to him after a while. Mickey wonders what she thinks of Ryan, but promptly retracts that thought a second later.

He doesn’t _care_ anymore.

Mickey takes another drink as he watches Ryan play with Liam across the room.

The Christmas Eve party is conducted in true Gallagher style, with barely enough booze for Mickey to stomach all the noise. Carl is perched on the couch next to him, and thank fuck the kid has gotten over his curious phase. If Mickey has to spend another Christmas enduring questions about the joys of gay sex, he’d supply the kid with porn himself, no matter what Fiona would do when she found out.

Instead, Carl just stares at Mickey, not saying a word.

“What?” Mickey barks, irritable. “No questions this time?”

“Ian’s louder in bed when he’s with you,” Carl says. He scampers off before Mickey can interrogate him, because _really,_ and has Carl gotten a chance to catch Ryan naked, that’d be helpful.

The Gallaghers are a whole bunch of useless.

Mickey has always had Ian to keep him company at every Gallagher function he’s been forced to attend in recent years, but he doesn’t even have Mandy here with him now. Probably stole off with Lip, he thinks bitterly. College managed to turn Lip into a hipster, because the shitty song pounding through the speakers isn’t helping his headache any. His day really hits rock bottom when his worst nightmare decides they need to become acquainted.

“So you’re the infamous Mickey,” Ryan says, throwing himself down on the couch. Mickey can see the sweat matting his hair to his forehead, can see the collar of Ian’s Panic! t-shirt peeking out from under his jacket. It has a ketchup stain at the neck—Mickey should know. He’d put it there himself, back when he and Ian had shared a closet and never bothered to figure out whose clothes were whose.

Ryan sticks out a hand, and Mickey eyes the offending appendage like it’s a ticking time bomb. “I’m Ryan.”

Mickey shakes his hand but makes sure to press down especially hard. Ryan winces a little but doesn’t let his grin falter. If Mickey were three years younger and ten times more hotheaded, Ryan would already be rolling on the floor clutching his nuts.

Ian comes stumbling down the stairs a minute later, hair stuck up in messy spikes on his head. His shoes are only halfway on, and he hops on one foot as he tries to stuff his foot into his other sneaker. He looks like he just rolled out of bed, and Mickey bets he’d stayed up late writing again.  

A few community college courses and a couple of ghostwriting jobs since his high school graduation had turned Ian into something close to the functional people he’d always envied from a distance, and Mickey couldn’t even fault Ian for simply being too good for him, really. 

“Goddamn _shit_ ,” Ian mumbles. “Hey, Ryan, can you—“

Ian stops short when he notices Mickey.

“What the fuck, Mick?”

“Mandy made me,” is all Mickey says in return.

“What the _fuck,”_ he says again, but louder this time. “I’m too sober for this.”

He presses a quick kiss to Ryan’s lips before snatching a bottle and a red plastic cup from the mess of a coffee table. Mickey flinches. Just two people showing affection for each other, he reminds himself. Simple.

“Did you take your pills?” Mickey can hear Ryan whispering.

“Yes, _mother_ ,” Ian bites back, grinning.

This is what Ian deserves, something easy, uncomplicated. Love is supposed to come naturally. He deserves someone who’ll declare his love to a crowd and not regret it one bit. Mickey keeps his feelings bottled up, his insecurities, his doubts. It had driven Ian mad.

Ryan’s probably already filled the spaces Mickey left. It doesn’t hurt to think of them fucking, not exactly, but when Mickey catches sight of Ryan’s shirt again— _Ian’s_ shirt—his breath catches in his throat.

He takes in Fiona dancing to some indie tune with her new boyfriend, before drawing Liam into her little circle. Debbie makes doe eyes at _her_ new boyfriend, and Fiona glares at him from the corner of her eye. These kids will always be her kids, young and carefree. Even Carl hasn’t run off to blow something up, but if the look in his eye is any indication, he’s not too far off. Mickey doesn’t belong here.

He can’t help but overhear Ian and Ryan’s conversation, and somewhere in the back of his mind, he wonders why he’s glued there.

“So,” Ryan says, ruffling Ian’s hair playfully, “my parents want to meet you.”

“Already?”

“You’ve already met my sister.”

“But Clara knows everyone.”

Mickey can’t take it anymore, and he’s about to give in to his instinct and get the fuck out of there when a hand wraps around his wrist, keeping him rooted in place. He looks down to see Ian staring up at him expectantly, eyes wide. If Mickey looks closely, he can see the smirk playing at the corner of Ian’s lips.

Ian had always known how to hurt Mickey best.

“Stay,” Ian says, “don’t leave because of me.”

“The world doesn’t revolve around you, Gallagher,” Mickey bites back harshly.

No, but your world does, the glint in Ian’s eyes seems to say.

Then Ryan butts in, and the moment is broken.

“You and Ian dated for a while, is that right?”

Mickey snorted. As if he didn’t know. As if he didn’t scope out his potential competition as soon as he’d spotted Mickey sitting there by himself. Sucks for him, because Mickey’s not even playing the game anymore, and, if he’s being honest with himself, he’d never been a serious contender in the first place. He’s just Ian’s first fling, the guy who helped him figure out his heart was too big to be stuck in the Southside.  

Mickey’s okay with that, he really is.

Ian groans. “Can we not talk about that now?”

“I’m curious!” Ryan continues on, ignoring Ian’s scowl. “Two gay kids living in the closet, trapped by their Southside upbringings…”

Mickey has his mouth open to give Ryan an eloquent reply littered with carefully chosen four-letter words, but Ian rolls his eyes so obviously Ryan can’t help but take notice. “You make it sound like serious rom-com shit, we mostly just fucked around. That was it.”

“Aw, you have to give me something more, babe.”

“Poor you, there was no torrid love affair.”

Sighing dramatically, Ryan leans back in his chair. “You’re a disappointment.”

“I’m boring as hell, trust me.”

Mickey can feel the contents of his stomach crawling out of his skin. The sound of Mandy’s laughter peals through the room, and okay, she’s distracted now, he can go without her pulling him back into the fold.

He mutters a few excuses, but before he can make his dramatic exit, Ryan calls out, “There’s that new club that opened a couple of days ago, Ian and I were thinking of checking it out when we get back? You should come too.”

Laughter erupts from Ian’s throat.  “Mickey and a bunch of drunk gay men is a recipe for disaster.”

Ryan’s brows screw up, and Mickey wonders what Ian has told Ryan about him. “But _he’s—“_

“Mickey’s the most heterosexual queer I’ve ever met.” Ian’s voice drops down to a whisper, still loud enough for Mickey to hear. “Quick, stop before you get him started talking about feelings, because we all know he’s not pussy enough to use his words properly.”

“Fuck you,” Mickey says, before he can catch himself. He’s not supposed to be fighting with Ian now, not when Mandy insists on watching his every move. To her, this is probably a sign that Mickey’s still in love with Ian, that he’s secretly pining for red hair and strong muscles and pure idiocy.

He’s not.

“Fuck you and your little,” Mickey waves his arms wildly, “passive aggressive bullshit. You left, asswipe. Not me.”

“Because you told me to!”

“I didn’t mean it!” Mickey blurts before he can take it back.

The room is silent, and Mickey can feel all eyes trained on him. He’s had his whole life to get used to this, being in the spotlight. Hiding in the background had never appealed to him, so he’d pushed at any restrictions, made a reputation for himself. Mickey thinks it’s what caught Ian’s eye in the first place, the knowledge he’d managed to fuck someone few others could decipher. He’d gotten past Mickey’s defenses and claimed a whole heaping of sex as his prize.

Mickey sucks in a breath and shakes his head slowly. “I’m done.”

When he leaves, Ian is still standing in place, his ass frozen to the chair.

* * *

Mickey thinks he fell in love with Ian Gallagher so hard his heart broke on impact.

* * *

Mickey does this thing where he thinks getting lung cancer will heal the ache inside of him.

Ian finds him smoking in his room, perched on the side of his bed. His brothers are out doing God knows what, so when Ian comes barreling into Mickey’s room, red-faced and panting, Mickey’s only wearing a pair of dirty old briefs.

“Shit!” Ian yells, slapping his hands over his eyes.

“Nothing you ain’t seen before,” Mickey protests, but he’s tugging on a pair of holey jeans and a shirt he grabs out of his suitcase. At least he can pretend he’s not as pathetic as he really is.

“You decent?” Ian’s voice is muffled by his hands. When Mickey doesn’t answer, Ian slowly removes his hands from his face. He flinches. “Is that my shirt?” Ian says carefully.

A quick glance down at his attire is enough for Mickey to confirm that he’s right. He fights the blush threatening to blossom on his cheeks. “Must have grabbed it on accident,” he mumbles.

“Yeah,” Ian agrees uneasily.

And that’s that.

Before Mickey can kick him out, Ian sits on Mickey’s bed, and, straightening his shoulders, he says, “We need to talk.”

“We already broke up, Gallagher,” Mickey reminds him. He remembers. The words had fallen from Ian’s mouth like the hammer nailing the last bits of their relationship closed, and Mickey can still hear the sound resonating in his head.

“I’m not dating Ryan,” Ian says in a rush. When Mickey just continues to stare, Ian shakes his head, already getting up. “This was a mistake, sorry, I shouldn’t have come here.”

Mickey grits his teeth impatiently. “Sit _down_ , Firecrotch.”

Ian spares another glance at the door but slumps back down on the bed. “Ryan’s a grad student,” he says, staring at the floor. “His thesis is on some queer philosophy shit I doubt you’d care about, he works out at the gym, his parents are nice, and he holds my hand in public, goddammit, Mick.”

“Seems perfect, then.”

“Yeah,” Ian says, “he probably is.”

Then he kisses Mickey, leaving tingles running down Mickey’s spine and his heart thudding loudly in his chest. Mickey had always wondered how Ian had transformed from a scrawny little kid to a man who towers above him, but when Ian cradles the back of Mickey’s neck, he can’t complain. Ian’s always loved wrapping his body around Mickey, and Mickey’s always loved the fall, once he got over the feeling of letting go. He presses close, drawing out the kiss.

Sometimes, it feels like they’ve gotten their beginnings backwards and their endings forwards, and now they’ve flip-flopped into this mess of their own making. If theirs is a love story, it’s a jumbled one.

“I asked Ryan to pretend,” Ian pants out as Mickey paints a line of kisses down his throat. He’s missed this, and he can’t get enough. Ian’s moan is obscene, but he presses on anyway. “He has a boyfriend. They broke up, but he’ll come running back to him the moment he calls. It was pretty serious.” Mickey pauses where he’s trying to mark Ian’s throat, and Ian takes the opportunity to add, “I told him that was me too.”

“You’re an asshole,” Mickey tells Ian.

“You’re one to talk,” Ian says, snorting. His hands still where they rest at Mickey’s back, drawing circles underneath Mickey’s shirt. “I don’t need you to tell me you love me all the time or whatever. I’ve lived with you for three years, Milkovich. I know how to understand the words you don’t say.”

Mickey blinks, hard.

Ian plays with a piece of lint on Mickey’s sleeve. “But just once, I wish you’d tell me what you’re thinking, you know? When I tell you I love you, I _mean_ it. I can’t deal with your brand of Milkovich insecurity. Don’t push me away.”

“Okay,” Mickey says, and he pulls Ian close. Mickey laces his fingers through Ian’s, curves his inhibitions and flaws into him so that he can remake all of their mistakes into something beautiful.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> come cry about gallavich with me on [tumblr](http://mariuspontnerdy.tumblr.com)


End file.
